Collaborative Research: Using Web Data to Study U.S. Congressional Campaigns and Representation

竞选活动是民主政治的一个决定性特征。然而，研究竞选活动及其影响一直很困难。在最近的工作中，调查人员开发了一种竞选沟通理论，并使用竞选团队和成员官方网站的数据测试了预期。在两项合作的国家科学基金会赠款(国家科学基金会0822819、0822782和1024079、1023291、1022902)的支持下，研究人员积累了一个从2002年到2010年的1,500多个网站编码的数据集。这些数据为研究竞选活动及其影响提供了前所未有的机会。调查人员将扩大他们的数据收集范围，将2012年的竞选活动以及2011年和2013年的立法会议包括在内。他们将在活动过程中对网站进行编码，对网站进行存档，对网站设计师进行调查，并在活动大约一年后对官方成员网站进行编码。他们还将征求对编码方案的意见，以包括其他学者感兴趣的特征，然后这些学者可以将数据用于自己的研究。出于各种原因，将数据扩展到2012年大选(以及2011年和2013年的立法会议)是至关重要的：党派之争与该项目过去几年的情况不同；2012年新国会议员的加入引发了一些耐人寻味的问题，涉及路径依赖，以及政党在影响那些开展非传统竞选活动的人的行为方面的力量；公众日益增长的科技预期，可能会刺激网站上最基本的技术使用量的增加。最终，调查人员将构建一个公开可用的数据集，其中包括超过12个时间点的大约1900个竞选网站和大约300个官方成员网站的编码。该项目具有明显的学术价值。这些数据将使学者能够跟踪互联网随时间的演变，并测试竞选和代表理论。与电视广告和辩论等其他非中介的竞选沟通渠道不同，几乎所有候选人都会推出竞选网站，所有代表都有官方网站。这使得能够对具有代表性的候选人和成员样本进行分析，而不是有偏见的样本。网站还使政客们能够展示他们行为的整体图景，而不是简短的声音片段或选定的唱名投票。该项目还产生了更广泛的影响。从这些数据中产生的见解可以改善竞选活动和代表性。该项目将涉及学生，他们将学习如何进行研究，并能够在自己的工作中使用数据。最后，该项目独一无二地汇集了民主政治的三个关键组成部分的数据：竞选、投票和代表。

Electoral campaigns are a defining feature of democratic polities. Yet studying electoral campaigns and their effects has been difficult. In recent work, the investigators have developed a theory of campaign communication and tested expectations using data from campaigns' and members' official websites. With the support of two collaborative National Science Foundation grants (SES-0822819, SES-0822782, and SES-1024079, SES-1023291, SES-1022902), the investigators have amassed a data set consisting of more than 1,500 website codings, from 2002 through 2010. These data offer unprecedented opportunities to study campaigns and their effects. The investigators will extend their data collection to include the 2012 campaign and the 2011 and 2013 legislative sessions. They will code sites over the course of the campaign, archive sites, implement a survey of website designers, and code official member websites approximately one year after the campaigns. They also will solicit input on the coding scheme to include features that interest other scholars who can then use the data for their own research. Extending the data to include the 2012 election (and the 2011 and 2013 legislative sessions) is critical for various reasons: partisanship differs from what it has been in past years of the project; the infusion of new members of Congress in 2012 raises intriguing questions about path dependency and the power of parties in affecting behaviors of those who ran untraditional campaigns; and the increasingly technological expectations of the public may stimulate an increase in what has been rudimentary technical usage on websites. In the end, the investigators will construct a publicly available data set that includes coding of approximately 1,900 campaign websites and roughly 300 official member websites, over twelve points in time. The project has clear intellectual merit. The data will enable scholars to track the evolution of the Internet over time and test theories of campaigns and representation. Unlike other unmediated sources of campaign communication, such as television advertisements and debates, virtually all candidates launch campaign websites and all representatives have official websites. This allows for analyses on a representative sample of candidates and members, rather than a biased sample. Websites also enable politicians to present a holistic picture of their behaviors rather than short sound bites or selected roll call votes. The project also produces broader impacts. Insights generated from these data could improve campaigns and representation. The project will involve students who will learn how to conduct research and be able to use the data in their own work. In the end, the project uniquely brings together data on three key components of democratic polities: campaigns, voting, and representation.